A New Jersey federal judge on Wednesday tossed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil case stemming from a broker-dealer of a $17.2 million pump-and-dump penny stock scheme, ruling that the agency’s case came too late for punitive actions.

The U.S. Supreme Court should hear former investment adviser Ray Lucia’s case questioning whether the hiring of SEC administrative law judges violates the Constitution, with his attorneys arguing Wednesday that his case presents a “clean opportunity” to decide the matter.

Lawyers for former Deutsche Bank AG trader Gavin Black sought to undermine the U.S. Department of Justice in a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday at a hearing in which the government must show its London Interbank Offered Rate-rigging case wasn’t tainted by Black’s compelled testimony in the U.K.

A Chinese investor who sought to receive a green card through the EB-5 visa program sued in California federal court on Tuesday to recover amounts he paid in connection with an alleged $50 million scheme that has resulted in federal criminal charges and forfeiture cases.

CubeSmart is said to have picked up a self-storage building in Florida for $17.75 million, the School of Visual Arts has reportedly renewed its 80,000-square-foot New York lease and US Bank is said to have taken control of an Illinois building following a foreclosure suit filed against owner Lexington Realty Trust nearly a year ago.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission told a New York federal court on Monday that its attorneys didn’t purposely look at privileged documents belonging to a foreign day-trading firm accused of manipulative trading and that, even if they did see a couple of those documents by accident, it hasn’t affected the case.

Specialty finance company J.G. Wentworth Co. filed for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware on Tuesday with a prepackaged plan already accepted by many creditors in hand to restructure its nearly $450 million in debt in a deal that hands over control to term lenders with a debt-for-equity swap.

An indirect effective owner of online foreign exchange broker FXCM filed for bankruptcy in New York on Monday with prenegotiated plans to push out the maturity date for $172.5 million in senior notes following the company’s delisting from public trading on the Nasdaq Global Market.

A New York federal judge has refused a request by MSD Capital LP to change the forfeiture-restitution balance in the case of a convicted insider trader who had been an analyst there, saying Monday he didn’t have jurisdiction since there’s now an appeal, and it wouldn’t have changed things this late in the game regardless.

A sometime TV pundit who held himself out as an investment manager after regulators stripped him of his registrations and the state of Illinois barred him from dealing in securities was charged with defrauding investors out of $10 million, according to an indictment unsealed Monday.

France-based private equity firm Ardian has agreed to sell a portfolio of infrastructure-related assets valued at over €1 billion to the asset management companies APG Group and AXA Group, the company said Tuesday.

A former Ernst & Young LLP partner on Tuesday urged a D.C. Circuit panel to upend penalties imposed by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and affirmed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which he said were tainted by the PCAOB operating under a structure later deemed unconstitutional.

Real estate investment firm Unibail-Rodamco SE said Tuesday it will pay $15.7 billion to acquire shopping center owner and operator Westfield Corp., boosting the French company’s reach in the retail sector through the acquisition of assets in major American cities, the U.K. and Australia.

Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP is representing Caesars Entertainment Corp.'s real estate investment trust VICI Properties Inc. in connection with its Tuesday filing for a $100 million initial public offering, a matter Sidley Austin LLP is working on for the underwriters.

Well-known activist hedge funds returned to the game in force in 2017, attempting a number of contentious proxy fights, spurring a handful of big-ticket tie-ups and rallying for increased deal prices. Here, Law360 recaps some of the year's most closely watched moments in the shareholder activist arena.

Expert Analysis

Trading in bitcoin futures opened this week on the CBOE Futures Exchange, with offerings from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Cantor Exchange to soon follow. In designing their contracts, the exchanges had to make decisions about contract size, tenor, and trading and settlement conventions, with some notable consequences, say Colin Lloyd and James Michael Blakemore of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.

More than any other statute, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has fueled the growth of the compliance industry. While the expansion of corporate compliance is a positive development, the fear-driven and FCPA-centric approach has also produced unfortunate consequences, says ethics consultant Hui Chen, who served as the U.S. Department of Justice's first-ever compliance counsel.

The U.S. agencies’ increasing coordination with their foreign partners has led to more potent Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations — in terms of both their scope and settlement cost, say Patrick Stokes, former chief of the FCPA Unit at the U.S. Department of Justice, and Zachariah Lloyd of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

Simply originating an initial coin offering in a foreign jurisdiction may not be sufficient to avoid the long and global reach of the U.S. securities laws — and the current ICO dragnet of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s new cyber unit, says John Reed Stark, president of John Reed Stark Consulting LLC.

Gary Ford's new book, "Constance Baker Motley: One Woman’s Fight for Civil Rights and Equal Justice Under Law," is more than a biography of the first African-American woman to become a federal judge. It presents in vivid detail how her work altered the legal landscape of the United States, says U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke of the Southern District of Florida.

Google’s status as a go-to research tool has transformed legal research habits, leading critics to view law libraries as cost centers. Law firms should embrace Google-style research tools and manage costs efficiently in order to position their libraries as valuable assets for years to come, says Donna Terjesen of HBR Consulting.

Millennials are now the largest living generation and comprise one-third of jurors. While it is impossible to generalize a group so large and diverse, trial lawyers should be mindful of certain generational differences, say baby boomer Lee Hollis and millennial Zachary Martin of Lightfoot Franklin & White LLC.

There have been many articles on the corporate monitor selection process, but you will find little guidance on how to prepare yourself for a job that has few parallels. There are three key lessons I have learned over the course of a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act monitorship still in progress, says Gil Soffer of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP.

When a borrower finds itself in a distressed situation, management or private equity sponsors will often identify valuable assets to isolate them from the distressed company, often to the detriment of certain creditors. A recent example involving Algeco Scotsman offers important takeaways for issuers as well as bondholders, say Adam Summers and Corey Fersel of Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson LLP.

Families of significant wealth have come to realize the benefits of establishing a family office, including enhanced control, privacy, customization of asset allocation, wealth and risk management and integrated legacy planning. Changes to the tax code currently pending in Congress could open up even more planning opportunities, say attorneys with Day Pitney LLP.